Sylvia Plath: Want

Sylvia Plath was American poet, novelist and short story writer. Explore interesting quotes on want.
Sylvia Plath: 684 quotes249 likes

“When they asked me what I wanted to be I said I didn’t know.
"Oh, sure you know," the photographer said.
"She wants," said Jay Cee wittily, "to be everything.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

“What a man wants is a mate and what a woman wants is infinite security,’ and, ‘What a man is is an arrow into the future and a what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

“I wonder about all the roads not taken and am moved to quote Frost… but won't. It is sad to be able only to mouth
other poets. I want someone to mouth me.”

Sylvia Plath

“I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night.”

Sylvia Plath

“A dispassionate white sun shone at the summit of the sky. I wanted to hone myself on it till I grew saintly and thin and essential as the blade of a knife.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

“When they asked some old Roman philosopher or other how he wanted to die, he said he would open his veins in a warm bath. I thought it would be easy, lying in the tub and seeing the redness flower from my wrists, flush after flush through the clear water, till I sank to sleep under a surface gaudy as poppies. But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defenseless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 12